With this morning’s unsettling news about O’Rourke’s, I thought it might be hard to switch gears and think about positive things. Luckily, as sad as I am about the (hopefully temporary) loss of a favorite restaurant, I am sufficiently removed from the devastation to be able to see there are still good things in the world. I offer you three from the last week:

1. Yesterday, it drizzled — just a bit — as I was heading home. It hasn’t rained here practically since June (when, you may remember, it rained so much our apartment flooded). While it wasn’t the gorgeous thunderstorm I was hoping for, it felt utterly delicious. Today’s weather was lovely and cool, and more rain is predicted for the weekend. The worst of summer might finally be over!

2. Today was a marathon day at work, with me arriving home just before 9. Waiting for me were two lovely skeins of yarn from The Dye Pot: sock yarn in a purple colorway called “Carmichael” and bulky yarn for this cute purse in a multi-hued colorway called “Wave.” The yarn was on sale, so it was even better.

3. Rudi just suggested that “rapscallion” should be the third beautiful thing for alliteration’s sake. How can you not love that?

Sickness has a way of making you appreciate the small things in life, because you’re just incapable of achieving big things. So in that frame of mind, I offer several beautiful things from my sick days:

1. All I wanted yesterday was a popsicle. Really. My throat hurt so much, I was miserable. Needing tp for the apartment and not wanting to trek all the way up to Rite Aid, I stopped at CVS when I got off the Metro. Not only did they have tp, as well as nice soft applesauce and mandarin oranges, but they also sold Edy’s fruit bars. I don’t think I’ve tasted anything so nice as that sweet stream of strawberriness as it melted down my throat (and my arm) on the walk home.

2. Rudi attended a fundraiser last night and stopped home to bring me a bunch of balloons before going out with some friends for a late dinner. They were a very sweet gesture, rustling over my head and freaking Jeremiah out with their pinging against one another. (I’m pretty sure he vaulted through the window in our bedroom in a single bound. I admit it; I laughed.) They were even funnier around 4:30 this morning, when they deflated a little, floated out of the bedroom, and caught their ribbons in the clamp that holds the fan’s screen on (not actually in the fan’s blades). There they were doing balloon boxing when I awoke. Della was looking on from the cat perch with utter delight. You could just hear her thinking, “More! More!”

3. I went to work on Tuesday because, as I have noted, I have an encroaching deadline that has me remarkably stressed out (and because I thought the flu was waning. If I’d known that it was strep and that it just a breather before the major bout, I might have handled things differently). Nonetheless, there I was on Tuesday, so I went up to our weekly lunchtime knitting group. I had knit a bit on the sock over the weekend — enough to know that I need to pull it out (again!) and knit it on smaller needles. (It does occur to me that I should perhaps let these socks rest for a little while and try a different pair…) So I decided to knit a gauge swatch for the baby sweater from the yarn I bought on Saturday. (For those who don’t knit, you knit a gauge swatch — a little 4″x4″ square — to avoid problems like I had with the sock where you find out that you and the person who wrote the pattern differ so dramatically in your choice of yarn or how tightly you knit that you end up with a different sized garment from what you’re expecting. This is not a problem in a scarf or a bag. It is a much bigger problem in something like a sweater and something you really ought to do if you’re giving said sweater as a gift to a friend.) And I’m on gauge! So I don’t need to mess with different sized needles and can cast on for the sweater as soon as I’m feeling a little more lively. (Don’t want to give any strep germs as a bonus baby gift…)

Three bonus beautiful things:

4. Moms: My own is a wonderful caretaker and is sending me emails several times a day to check on my recovery. There’s no one I’ve ever wanted around more when I was sick, and I’m grateful for the virtual nursing. Rudi’s mom is a doctor and is supervising my recovery from 2,500 miles away. And my boss’s motherly instincts kicked in yesterday to send me home as soon as she saw me. Even if I couldn’t see that it wasn’t essential for me to be in the office for things to get done, she could see that I needed some additional recovery time.

5. Increments: I am feeling better today. Not well, but well enough to work from home. I expect to feel even better tomorrow. And the day after that. The miracles of penicillin…

6. You: Thank you for all the well wishes. I don’t even know some of you! All suggestions were taken, and it gave me a little boost each time I got up and someone else had left a note. I’m sure today’s progress is, in part, due to all of you.

Three beautiful things from the last week:

1. The potato knishes at RFK aren’t as good as the ones you’d find in New York, but they are well-seasoned and surprisingly tasty — and a welcome vegetarian option at the stadium.

2. I pulled out the PS2 and (literally) dusted off the dance pad to put on Dance Dance Revolution the other night. I was pleasantly surprised to discover I didn’t have to re-learn the whole game and, in fact, managed a new personal best (in light game mode).

3. Five-week-old Erin and Tommy are adorable and cuddly and soft. Pat and Heidi invited us to dinner tonight so we could hang out with them and meet the twins, which was terribly sweet of them. We each got to hold them and to play with Jack, not quite two, who thought the wrapping paper and ribbon for the present we brought him was delightful. I love little kids.

Three beautiful things from the last week:

1. Having finished the socks, I get to pick the next project to work on. This involved looking through a bunch of books and magazines and then opening up the pie safe to look over all my yarn. It’s so tantalizing to choose to the last summer project — and to think ahead to days when I’ll want to sit outside with wool in my lap once again!

2. Tuesday night, just after work ended, my cell phone rang. It was BW, who caught me up on all the news of her summer. Then Erik IM’d me and we got to talk about what’s coming up in his life. I miss my friends from up north and it always brings bright rays of sunshine and rainbows into my life when I hear from them.

3. I made ambrosia this week. It’s very simple — just combine marshmallows, sour cream, mandarin oranges, pineapple, and coconut — but a remarkably unhealthy way to eat fruit. So instead of making it regularly, I only eat it once or twice a summer these days. Man, is it a tasty dessert!

Our trip was lovely but exhaustingly hot and I just couldn’t face doing anything more strenuous than eating ice cream and napping on the couch when we got home last night. So Thursday’s regular Three Beautiful Things appear today instead:

1. Eri and the Internet gods made it possible for us to take Amtrak to New York for a very reasonable price. The train takes about the same amount of time as driving (although maybe a little less), but you don’t have to find a parking spot for it. And while it takes more time than flying, it is more spacious, they let you use electronic devices the whole time, and they don’t forbid cell phones (unless you want to avoid them by travelling on the Quiet Car). We experienced a few difficulties with their 1-800 number, but the people at the station were kind and helpful. Overall a very nice experience.

2. We made reservations over the weekend to take a long weekend trip to visit Rudi’s mom in September. She has been cajoling us to visit her for a while, but I think she thought it might be a lost cause as we head into the fall semester. The fact that the Yarn Harlot will be speaking a few blocks from Jenny’s house has nothing (nothing, I say!) to do with the timing of our visit.

3. Karen’s Michael remarked that he thought it unusual that people a decade out of college should still have such close bonds as I do with some of my college friends. It hadn’t occurred to me, but I suppose it’s true. But I have whole handfuls of people from college I am still in touch with (at least around birthdays and Christmas if not more frequently) and who sometimes read the blog (hi!), so I guess I am remarkably lucky. Maybe it helps that most of us were, at one point or another, part of the substance-free crowd in college, so we were a tightly knit bunch of characters to begin with. But there were plenty of other folks who were also part of that community at the same time with whom I never had a bond or with whom I lost touch, so I don’t think that accounts for it wholly. But whatever the reason, enduring friendships are a truly beautiful thing and I am grateful for all of mine.

Three beautiful things from our time on the road last week:

1. I took knitting on vacation with me. (This is not surprising; I take knitting everywhere, almost.) I packed Rudi’s sock, which I didn’t work on much because damp or sweaty hands do not encourage the easy flow of narrow-guage yarn, and I packed some cotton my friend Cynthia had sent me to make dishcloths with. Dasch and Reesie watched me knit for a while, and then Reesie asked if she could try. “Sure,” I said. “You work the yarn and I’ll hold the needles.” And sure enough we knit a whole row together like that. Then Dasch asked if he could try. And he did, but then he got bored and wanted us to switch and for him to work the needles and me to work the yarn. “Okay.” I showed him how and off we went. But then there were marshmallows to roast and s’mores to make and yarn was abandoned for loftier pursuits (by me as well as them). Next year, though, I’m breaking the yarn and needles out early.

2. There is nothing like having little kids sidle up to you and want to sit on your lap or snuggle with you on a blanket. Dasch, Reesie, and their new friend Aveeva all wanted some lap time over the weekend. And a couple of times I ended up on the blanket late at night with a sleepy child dozing off in my lap. There’s no nicer feeling in the whole wide world.

3. We arrived at Turkey Ridge after the folk festival ended to discover two new residents had moved into the family homestead. Callie and Chloe are two pint-sized, nine-week-old fluff balls. They’re a little skittish around people yet, as they’ve only been part of the family for a week. They run and jump and play nonstop until they crawl under something to sleep for 10 hours, causing mild alarm and panic about where they’ve disappeared to. They’re still at that age when their purrers are more developed than their tiny, palm-sized selves and when they consent to sit with you for a few minutes, their motors run full-speed.